ALL TOGETHER NOW: The best part about seeing Oxford Collapse is that the show isn’t about them. |
Last week, after dinner with Oxford Collapse, we walk back over to Chicago’s Empty Bottle to watch the openers. During Tigercity’s set (smooth, wooden), I stand near Adam Rizer, the Collapse’s bassist and singer, as a stream of friends queue up to say hello: the buddy from an old band; the writer in town covering a furniture fair; a riled-up softball team. (They lost 24-1, but they had a Gatorade cooler filled with vodka. Is that why they lost? Or is that how they cope?) The warmth flowing from Rizer during each meeting is infectious — he includes me in every introduction, and suddenly the left-fielder is telling me high-school skateboarding stories.
If my memories of this Oxford Collapse (who’re coming to T.T. the Bear’s this Tuesday) show skip quickly from Rizer to his friends, it’s not to suggest that he or his bandmates lack presence. Rather, it’s a testament to their sincerity and inclusiveness — rarities in indie rock. Their shows create a space for eager friend making and attentive energy; even as the crowd thins for the Collapse’s set, the band energize the remaining audience, and before long beer is spraying everywhere, a sign of success. Rizer and guitarist/singer Mike Pace bounce around the stage making faces and pulling shapes. Midway through, Rizer catches my eye and repeats a move from two songs earlier to another audience member: he leans over and yells the lyrics in my face. The snippet I catch: “This only happens once a year, these anniversaries.” This kind of interaction is part of what’s best about seeing this band — the show isn’t about them, it’s about a bunch of sweaty friends up too late on a Thursday, a spontaneous celebration.
Although popular opinion likens the Oxford Collapse to a cadre of late-’80s indie-rockers — the thin, reverberating guitars of early R.E.M. with a touch of finger-picked bass from the Minutemen — there’s a helping of psychedelia in Pace’s layered delay and drummer Dan Fetherston’s tom-heavy beats. To put all this on record for the forthcoming Bits (Sub Pop), the band chose an odd recording process: two sessions, each with a different buddy, each buddy with a totally different recording style. Chad Matheny recorded on an old four-track; Eric Emm took a more conventional high-end approach.
The two producers and the band holed up and worked through the material, sometimes running between two rooms to connect two songs and their respective idiosyncrasies. Although culling a cohesive album from such methods seems improbable, the juxtaposition of Matheny’s warmer, lo-fi sound and Emm’s glossier approach deepens Bits’ character. There’s enough sonic variety to the album that it never falls into that pop-rock groove where songs languish in a uniform tone and hooks grow indistinguishable from one another. “Young Love Delivers” is a mid-tempo catalogue of presents from a loved one — arpeggiated chords flit over quick tom rolls and spirited calls of “whoa-oh-oh.” “Back of Yards” is a bursting power-chord number that abruptly shifts gear into echoey dream pop. The production values change as fluidly as the songs — sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between producers.
